(Loosely based on Charles Perrault’s Toads & Diamonds)
A broken home is rarely anything other than a trial for all those who have to live within its walls. Apart from the trauma caused by the breaking up of a previously coherent family unit, subsequent actions and hardships often make life extremely difficult and taxing for each and every one of the unhappy participants in these events. The time when and the place where lives are squeezed and wrung out under such circumstances is, in the great scheme of things, immaterial, but for one such family, living in a small village in one of England’s elm-folded western valleys, the struggle for a good life was particularly hard.
Mrs. Milligan and her two daughters, Estelle and Hazel, lived in a small redbrick cottage that stood in a forlorn and lonely spot at the far end of a shabby and dusty village high street. Where there had once been rows of vegetables growing in the front garden and a pretty orchard of neatly pruned and espaliered fruit trees in the back garden, there was now nothing more than a choking of weeds and ivy smothered, skeleton branches. Ever since the departure of her husband some years previously, the family had scraped a living by taking in washing and ironing, and doing cleaning jobs for some of the village’s more prosperous families. The two girls could remember little other than traipsing around after their mother, visiting house after well-appointed house, in a desperate quest to earn money amid fineries and fripperies that they could never hope to afford for themselves.
Of the two daughters, Estelle was the spitting image of her mother, although blessed, thankfully, with the softness of youth, while Hazel, two years the younger, was the very picture of her father. The similarities between mother and eldest daughter did not end in looks. They were both of a similar personality and disposition, being proud and disagreeable to an extreme, convinced as they were that they were the victims of a cruel and heartless man. Because of this undoubted sin perpetrated against them by the ogre, they both believed the world owed them big time for all of their suffering and undoubted grace under poverty’s iron heel. It was no surprise to anyone in the village that Mrs. Milligan had remained single for so many years.
Hazel, on the other hand, was one the sweetest, kindest and most courteous little girls in the whole county. She had a radiant smile that lit her face up with a pure and natural beauty, a beauty that brightened the gloom well beyond the physical limits of light. No matter what the hardship or the provocation, she always tried to see the best in any situation and so, despite the tragic circumstances of her family’s life in the closeted world of Upper Risington, she remained a shining beacon of happiness when all around was shadowed in darkness and despondency.
Life in the Milligan household was a bleak affair at the best of times and Mrs. Milligan suffered unaccountably from her nerves due to the continual reminder of her bastard husband that blazed out from her youngest daughter’s face every minute of the day. She would have been quite content for the girl to spend her days out of sight and her nights locked in her bedroom had it not been for the fact that Hazel never complained about chapped hands or ironing elbow. Hazel was quite unlike Estelle, who preferred to spend her time, when not pretending to dust someone’s knick-knacks, watching day time television soap operas and reality shows about other people’s lives. Mother and eldest daughter doted on each other and regularly shared the little luxuries that came their way when there was a purse full of cash left over from the benefits payments and the hourly wages earned from charring.
Poor Hazel, meanwhile, worked her fingers to the bone in a never-ending cycle of drudgery and domestic slavery, washing other people’s clothes and ironing them, cleaning the house, cooking meals and fetching thick, black coal from the back yard bunker. She was never allowed, now that she was blossoming into a beautiful young woman, to leave the house and accompany her mother and sister on their daily errands and cleaning jobs. Her only respite from the drab surroundings of the little redbrick cottage was a weekly trip to visit an aged, one time neighbour, a certain Miss Huddlestone, who had been kind enough to baby sit for the girls in happier times before the family had split asunder.
Miss Huddlestone now lived in a sheltered retirement bungalow in the next village, Lower Risington, and every Wednesday afternoon Hazel popped into the village shop, and, out of the bus fare given to her by her begrudging mother, she bought a large Bakewell tart and a bag of lemon sherbets, and walked, come rain or shine, the two miles to her friend’s neat little home.
One Wednesday afternoon, with the sound of her sister’s harsh voice still grating in her ears, Hazel put the usual cakes and sweets into a plastic bag and walked all the way to Lower Risington bathed in bright spring sunlight. She was particularly fond of spring, heralding as it did the lengthening of days and the chance to hang the washing outside to dry in good, clean, fresh air. On this particular Wednesday the world was particularly bright and full of goodness, with the hedgerows sparkling in their blossom coats and the birds busy with their nest building songs. Hazel was in a fine mood when she knocked on her friend’s door and together they enjoyed quite the happiest afternoon tea they had ever had together.
As Miss Huddlestone drained the last dregs of her Earl Gray and wiped Bakewell tart crumbs from the lightly sprouting beard that covered her withered old chin, she turned to young Hazel, took her hand and whispered, “You are such a lovely girl, my dear, so pretty and kind, and you’ve never forgotten to come and see me. I want to give you a gift”.
Hazel smiled sweetly and protested that visiting her friend was enough of a gift and that she wouldn’t think of accepting anything else, but the old woman paid no attention to her whatsoever.
“I think you’ll like the gift”, continued the old girl, smiling broadly. “You see, I’m not just any dear old bat, dear, I’m a dear old witch, dear!”
Hazel tried very hard not to laugh because she didn’t want to appear rude, but she couldn’t help smirking slightly behind her hand.
“I know, I know”, said the old woman, “it’s all very hard to fathom, especially when you’re so young and inexperienced. Anyway, I’ve decided to reward you for all of your kindness and for taking the time and trouble to come all this way every week. From now on, whenever you smile a real smile, a smile that breaks like sunrise on a clear blue summer morning, you’ll find a little pearl or diamond in your pocket!”
Hazel laughed out loud and beamed at the old woman. “Oh go on, Mary, you’re so funny”, and as she grinned at the old woman with every ounce of her happy, joking little soul, she put her hand into her jeans pocket.
No one in this fair land’s long history could ever have been as surprised or delighted as little Hazel. Between her fingers she could feel something small and hard and round, and she was sure that there had been nothing in her pocket just a moment ago. She pulled out her tightly bunched fist and opened her fingers out slowly and nervously. Right there in the palm of her hand was a perfectly round, moonshine pearl of such beauty and radiance that the girl was unable to move or to speak for a full five minutes. As the shock and surprise subsided, Hazel realised that she did believe in witches and fairies and she let out a yelp of joy, hugging Miss Huddlestone so tightly that the old dear thought she would burst her seams.
By the time that Hazel had greeted everyone she met on her way home that evening with a massive smile and wave, by the time that she had expressed her joy to the world a hundred and one times, her pockets were positively bulging with gem stones and pearls. She arrived home a little later than usual to find her mother and her sister waiting impatiently for their tea. As soon as the front door shut they both began to scold her for being so late and so inattentive to their well-being.
“I’m sorry for being late, Mum”, replied Hazel, smiling in spite of the hurtful things that were being said. She walked over to the coffee table in the middle of the living room and filled the spaces in between empty cola cans and the over flowing ashtray with a heap of brightly shining diamonds and pearls. “But I can explain…”
“What the bloody hell have you been doing?” screamed her mother as Estelle immediately knelt down by the coffee table and started to pick out all of the biggest diamonds from the pile. “Where the chuffin’ hell have they come from?”
Hazel told her mother and her sister the whole story about their mutual friend, about her being a witch and about her wonderful gift. By the end of the story the entire family was beaming. At last their suffering was over and their fortunes assured. Mrs. Milligan cuddled her youngest daughter to her ample bosom for the first time in years and called her things like ‘darling‘ and ‘poppet’ and ‘precious’. Every time that Hazel smiled at her mother or her sister she reached into her jeans pockets and added another sparkling gem to the pile on the coffee table.
By nine o’clock that evening the family had enough booty in their living room to retire from the domestic cleaning and washing business forever more, and Hazel, tired out from smiling so much with all of the love in the house, went to bed to dream happy dreams of a future where neither the bogeyman nor the tallyman would ever come to get her again.
Once Hazel was safely tucked up in the land of dreams, Mrs. Milligan, having allowed her eldest daughter to keep a few of the smaller diamonds, then swept the pile of jewels into a plastic food container. Sharing a bottle of fizzy wine with Estelle, she set about making her own plans for a future far removed from the heartache and stress of her current life.
“Hazel’s luck should be yours by right, my girl”, she said to Estelle. “From now on we’ll keep her here on Wednesdays while you visit that daft old bugger. With a little bit of work you should be able to get her to do the same trick for you. She was half raving when we moved in here and she’s obviously gone the whole hog now. Treat her nice for a few weeks and we’ll be millionaires by Christmas”.
“I’m not visiting the daft crow, ma”, replied Estelle with a whine. “She’s old and she smells and everything.”
Mrs. Milligan looked at daughter number one with a hard ratty stare.
“Do I have to?” whimpered the girl.
“You’ll do as you’re bloody well told, miss”, hissed her mother, and with that, and despite all of the sullen whinnying and misery that Estelle brought to bear, schemes and plans were laid for the following week.
Come the Wednesday afternoon, Mrs. Milligan locked Hazel in the under stairs cupboard and frog marched her eldest daughter to the village shop, where she bought the finest assortment of soft centres that the proprietor had to offer. Then she ordered a taxi to take Estelle to Lower Risington. In no time at all Estelle found herself on Miss Huddlestone’s doorstep, box of chocolates in hand, forcing the most wheedling of smiles across her barely cleaned teeth. The taxi parked up at the kerb side, Estelle having told the driver that she’d be no more than ten minutes.
Miss Huddlestone opened the door to her beloved Hazel but found there instead the gum chewing, pony-tailed whine that marked Estelle’s presence in the world. She let out a long sigh, but nonetheless she ushered the girl into her home and brought the tray full of tea things through to the front room.
Estelle sloped into one of the armchairs, declining a drink or a biscuit. She chucked the box of chocolates at the old lady and pouted.
“Are you sure you won’t have a cup of tea, dear?” asked Miss Huddlestone
“No”, grunted the girl.
“Oh well” replied the old woman. She took a sip of Earl Gray and looked at her visitor over the rim of her teacup.
“Would you mind awfully fetching my glasses from the kitchen? I must have left them on the work top and I can barely see anything without them”
“What am I”, complained the girl, “you’re bleedin’ slave or something? I’m not a skivvy, you know!”
Estelle gave the old bat one of her looks, a look that told you to sod off because you were boring and didn’t understand anything important. Miss Huddlestone, who was no stranger to angry young women, having spent many years in secondary education before taking up her current line of work as a white witch, returned the look, eyeball to eyeball, pensioner to youth, and won the contest hands down.
“I’ll tell you what you are, dear”, she said calmly and quietly, as she put her cup down on the tray. “You’re a rude and spoilt little hussy, definitely your mother’s daughter. You’ve all the breeding of the pigsty, but despite your ill manners and your attitude I will give you a gift, just like I gave lovely Hazel a gift. Every time you give someone one of those vacuous and disobliging looks you will find a little present in your pocket.”
“Vac…what?” muttered Estelle
“Just leave now, dear, before I get really pissed off”
Estelle had her pride. No one had a right to talk to her like that. She gave the old hag her most vicious, drop-dead stare and stormed out of the little house. She slammed the cottage door shut and jumped into the waiting taxi, barking orders to the driver to get her back to Upper Risington pronto.
That might have been the end of Estelle’s ordeal, except that Miss Huddlestone’s power to grant gifts was unparalleled anywhere in England’s green valleys. The car had only gone a few hundred metres down the road when the driver slammed on the brakes and turned to look at the girl on the back seat.
“What the bloody hell is that smell?” he hissed nasally, holding his nose tightly shut between his thumb and forefinger. Estelle pouted, stuck her hands in her pockets and was about to deliver her best ignoring look when she made a dreadful discovery. Her right hand, rather than being thrust into a soft, warm pocket full of dark, tight nothingness, had actually made contact with something altogether more disgusting. She felt something soft and warm all right, but whatever it was it was certainly of some substance.
“Out”, yelled the taxi driver, in a horrified, gagging voice, and out the girl got. She was left stranded in the middle of a country lane on a bright and sunny summer afternoon with nothing to show for her effort but a pocket full of dog mess and a smell that seemed to follow her whichever way the wind blew.
When Estelle eventually reached her home, bedraggled and exhausted after her long walk under a baking sun, she hung around in the front garden, not daring to enter the house. As soon as her mother caught sight of her lurking there in the front garden she rushed out to find out how the afternoon had gone.
“Well?” she demanded urgently, before taking a step back and asking, “Have you trodden in something?”
Estelle stood there dumbly, mouthing words but unable to make any sounds, and so, after a few mute moments during which she could feel her mother’s anger rising, she pulled her right hand out of her jeans pocket and let little gobbets of half baked ordure drip from her fingers. At the sight of the awful gift given to her by Miss Huddlestone both mother and daughter wailed like banshees, cursing their ill luck and the name of poor Hazel to hell and back.
“It’s all her fault”, screamed Mrs. Milligan. “I’ll beat her black and blue, I’ll tan her, I’ll strip that smile of hers from her bones!”
Needless to say, poor little Hazel, who had been locked away in the cupboard for the whole of the hot and sweaty afternoon, had finally come to the end of her own tether. When her mother unlocked and opened the door, Hazel burst through the opening like a small hand grenade and ran out of the house, down the road and far, far away, taking her wonderful gift with her. No one in Upper Risington ever heard from her again, although there were rumours that she ended up in London, where, it was said, she married a prince or a famous footballer and lived happily ever after.
As for Estelle, try as she might she couldn’t break the habit of her early years and she never learned to smile. Eventually, after suffering many years of ridicule and evil odours, she learned to never wear any clothes that had pockets attached, but by then the following wind that had first assailed her one Wednesday afternoon in her teens had saturated her skin. Wherever she went people called her names until, one summer some years later, she took herself off to a remote corner of the Lake District, lay down in a corner of a field and there, as far as anyone knows, she still remains.
Mrs. Milligan, meanwhile, minding the Tupperware tub full of diamonds and pearls taken from Hazel when she had come home from visiting Miss Huddlestone’s bungalow, found that a life backed up by a little capital was much more bearable and now lived in genteel respectability in a seaside villa on the south coast with a retired bank manager, which goes to show that happy endings, even with Estelle’s tragic and lonely life taken into account, usually have little to do with what some people deserve.